I’m currently a rising sophomore at University of Michigan (Ross Pre-Admit) and I’m looking to transfer to another university for the Fall 2016 Semester. Please let me know what my chances are for each of these schools, and what I could potentially improve on.
Schools:
Columbia
Brown
Georgetown McDonough School of Business
Duke
Dartmouth
UVA McIntire School of Commerce
Penn Wharton School
UC Berkeley Haas School of Business
Cornell AEM
Academics:
College GPA: 3.84/4.00 (Pre-Business Courses)
High School GPA: 3.73/4.00 (Unweighted, Top 20% of Class)
High School: One of the Top NY Prep Schools
SAT: 2210
High School Activities:
FLBA (President, 4 years total)
Varsity Lacrosse (2 Year Captain, 4 years total)
Varsity Football (1 Year Captain, 3 years total)
Model UN (Vice President, 4 years total)
Awards/Recognition:
High School Cum Laude
AP Scholar with Honors
National Merit Commended
National Honors Society
$22,000 Scholarship (Per year)
Work Experience:
Wells Fargo-Wealth Management (Summer Intern 2015)
Entrepreneur: Made about $25,000 from 2011-2014
Other Info:
State: NY
Financial Aid: None Needed
Legacy: None
Colleges Accepted After High School Senior Year: CMU, Rice, Boston College, Wake Forest
@Oberyn does the reason really matter or affect my chances…?
Obviously the reason reason I want to transfer is to have better prospective career opportunities and a stronger alumni network, while also learning in a smaller classroom environment. Quite frankly, I’m not the biggest fan of being in a graduating class of 7000 students. Obviously in my essay, I’ll give different reasons for why I would like to be part of each particular school I have on my list
I’m not as familiar with college stats or how the transfer process works, but for the sake of this post on going to assume that it is identical to the high school application process. Looking at your stats, a lot of the schools seem like reaches. Your GPA is a little low, especially for the Ivies where I feel that you probably should have around a ~3.9+. The SAT and high school exteacurriculars seem fine, but the college exteacurriculars seem relatively weak. Again, not sure how college is so they might be all good. The really big thing for these schools is you need something to stand out; the schools you are looking out all have extremely competitive applicants and I have a feeling that he transfer process would be more difficult than the application process considering that most of the classes are already filled. Make sure that you can express to the admissions officers why they should accept you over the other students. Overall I’d say that they are all low-mid reaches, with a possible boost to the business schools because of the business associated activities. I hope that helps!
Your career prospects wouldn’t really change dramatically unless you were to get into an ivy. Even then it would only be marginally better. The benefit of Georgetown and Berkeley over Ross is so low that it’s not really worth transferring for IMO.
Here is what you should know-- the seats at Ivy-plus schools that are available for transfers is largely tied to attrition. Since attrition is almost non-existent in the top Ivy schools, so are the seats available. By way of example, recently, Harvard had over 1500 applicants and admitted about 15, and Yale had over a 1000 applicants in which about 2 dozen were offered seats. So, while being qualified is certainly a criteria, the other portion must convey why these schools; typical reasons are that these schools offer programs and/or degrees not offered at your existing institution. Simply not liking the size of your school and wanting to transfer more prestigious will not suffice.
Second, that you could have obtained admission as a freshmen applicant. Third, that you have perfect scores at your current institution. Long story short…it is much more difficult to obtain admission as a transfer than as applying for a freshmen seat…
As for CAL, while doable, what you should know is that the majority of their transfer seats are reserved for CC students, thus while the percentage, on the surface, may seem liberal, it is pretty competitive for out of state applicants. (Any why CAL, as it is almost as large a UMich?) The same thing applies for Cornell which has reserved seats for students in the NY State system. The est of the Ivies you have listed are very competitive, and in the single digits of acceptance.
I think your best bets are UVA and Gtown, I am not quite versed in Duke, but would assume it to be very competitive.
Guys, if I just don’t really like it at Umich, i have the right to attempt to transfer…
@londondad notre dame is actually pretty mediocre, i have several high school friends there who are in the undergrad business school and they say not that many people go to good companies, at least in the finance sector, it’ll be a waste of time for me to apply there
and @m4tt0201 thats just not true about CC Students. plenty of non community college students transfer in every year, because at the end of the day, why would they turn down someone with my stats over a student from a community college with the same or worse stats? just wouldn’t make logical sense… the community college kids are the best of the worst, but even the best of the worst isn’t as good as the worst of the best lets be real here
@JE9996 Nobody is saying you don’t have the right to transfer. You do. But you should also know that transferring into some of these schools (specifically the Ivies) is more difficult than gaining admission as a freshman, which is already very hard.
In regards to your comments about CC students: just because someone goes to a CC doesn’t mean they’re the “worst”; many students must go to a community college because it’s not financially feasible at the time of admission into a larger, more prestigious school to attend. Or they want to apply as a transfer to a college they initially got rejected to. There are many reasons that a person may want to go to a CC and then transfer, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re dumb.
Honestly the University of Michigan is a top 50 school with amazing job prospects, if you look hard enough. Why can’t you learn to love it, and find your niche among the 7000 students in your class?
If you think that the kids transferring from community college are the best of the worst you’re in for a rude awakening my friend. Just because you go to community college doesn’t make you any less qualified than somebody going to University of Michigan. They have so many things in their favor. They don’t have to spend all their time competing for grades and can spend that doing things like internships or starting companies that you wouldn’t have time to do. They’re automatically the top of their class. Don’t be arrogant.
You do have the right to transfer. If you don’t like it then that’s fine. I can’t predict your results but Cornell seems to be a feasible option. Just my two cents: if being part of a class of 7000 isn’t your thing at UM, then going to Berkeley will not be your best option either. Berkeley has some amazing opportunities but you really have to compete with ivy-level students and your advising experience will be less intimate. There’s nothing really compelling about your application, but there’s also nothing that raises a red flag.
@Coldsummer123@BabylonBabylon I can guarentee you that community college kids don’t have anything in their favor against me. Their work experiences are 99% likely to be nowhere better than or even CLOSE to being as good as mine, and their grades and test scores most certainly will not be either; they aren’t even viewed upon as competition to me. They will all get the last dibs on the remaining available seats after the actual university kids… this is just a plain fact, and anyone with just a little common sense would know this.
Have you ever taken a look at the community college transfer pool’s students’ posts? Their apps are all garbage, and even those with the 4.0’s have test scores and work experiences being far below those of the average university applicants. Yes, I get that some people don’t have the financial resources to afford college when they graduate high school, but honestly, if they were actually smart enough, they could’ve earned a full scholarship. Additionally, some schools are 100% need fulfilling, so if a person’s family only earns 10k a year, the university will just give them a full ride if they actually deserved to get accepted to that university. So the issue isn’t that they couldn’t afford college, its that they couldn’t get INTO the college to begin with…
@Oberyn you have a good point about large class sizes, but at least UC Berkeley’s general name has a better reputation, and its business school (Haas) is definitely better than Ross. Also, in addition to pursuing a business major, I would like to pursue a second major in computer science, and UC Berkeley has one of the premier comp sci programs in the nation, and they sent hundreds and thousands of kids into the tech business and to silicon valley. University of Michigan’s comp sci program is just so-so in quality, and isn’t that well known to be quite frank…
Honestly I hope you guys don’t get me wrong, I think my school is good and all, and I’m having an okay time here, but there are just some aspect of education that I’m not exactly the biggest fan of. So no, I won’t jump a bridge or anything if I can’t transfer out- I’ll be totally fine- but transferring out would just be a little more ideal for me
I apologize if I’m sounding arrogant, but I’m just being real here with you guys. I don’t have time to pretend to be politically correct, especially on an anonymous site in which I have no need to be
Maybe some of the people who are reminding you that community college kids aren’t all mediocrities are also “being real.” In most pools of successful transfer applicants, there are plenty of students who attended a CC or a lesser-known, less-selective college. Those are the ones that really can articulate a compelling argument for “moving up” to an adequately challenging setting-something a student at a top 20 school can’t do.
Do you think you’d have a better chance at Columbia than a student at Occidental College who scored a 30 on his ACT and had a B+ GPA in his time at Occidental? If so, you’d be wrong. That student is Barack Obama, class of '83, a 1981 transfer.
Well since we are being so honest, and the veneer of being polite is out the window, I would say it would be quite aspirational of you to gain admission to more than one of the colleges on your list. Now, it takes only one, but I highly doubt that if you keep to your list, you are successful to more than a single school. Frankly, if you could not obtain admission as a freshmen, you are not presenting something so spectacular that would warrant admission now…
@NotVerySmart you’re like… actually not very smart are you? Barack transferred in 1983… do you know how EASY it was in 1983 to get admitted anywhere?? Just look up the acceptance rates for colleges back during that time. It would be a cakewalk if I had my current stats in 1983… Even in 2005, just one decade ago, the admission rates for almost all the good colleges were twice as high as they are now … (ex: Northwestern 2005 acceptance rate was about 30%, now it’s 15%, maybe even lower)
Don’t believe me on this? Look up the stats for any colleges and you’ll see what I mean.
And @boolaHI thats good logic, and I honestly I agree with what you’re saying, in that if I couldn’t get in as a freshman, then I probably can’t get in as a transfer, EXCEPT, that out of …
Columbia
Brown
Georgetown McDonough School of Business
Duke
Dartmouth
UVA McIntire School of Commerce
Penn Wharton School
UC Berkeley Haas School of Business
Cornell AEM
…I only originally applied to Penn Wharton ED, Brown (as a philosophy major, probably not the best idea), and Columbia. Also, my SAT Score back then was only 2100 (I re-took it this year). So given that: I haven’t even applied to the majority of these places to begin with, I’m killing it in college, and that my SAT score is over 100 points higher than before, I’d say I probably have a fairlyyy higher chance of getting into at least ONE of these colleges on my list, wouldn’t you say?
The Ivies will be very hard, and the stats prove it out. If you parse down on the numbers, the biggest transfer school to the Ivy ones, were other Ivy schools…